Set a few years before the events of Episode IV A New Hope, Empire at War lets players rewrite history as well as experience the aftermath of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, the creation of the Rebel Alliance, and Darth Vader's rise to power.

Variants are a unique way of creating new units without using very much code. In the code following this paragraph I will be making a unique version of the MC 80b used by the rebel Fleet Commander. Note: I don't recommend copying anything from the code as It's from an edited mod that I'm currently using (SAU 3.3). The code gives a general idea of how this is implemented so that you may implement it.

What the above code does in lamen's terms is it uses the code from "Calamari_Cruiser" as a base. You get that conclusion from Calamari_Cruiser The rest of the code changes or adds code values for the new unit. An example of that would be RV_MC_80b_FleetCom.ALO It uses another model instead of using the default one from "Calamari_Cruiser"

What the above code does is attach the Rebel Fleet Commander to his new unique ship that we used as a variant in the first set of code. How it does that is this line of code MC80_FleetCom

A warning for people who want to use variants. It can be buggy at times if you create variant as sometimes you might have an error an the XML code, but once you fix that you shouldn't have any problems that I know of. This is a great time saver if you want to have a hero have a unique variant of an existing unit or have an upgraded unit at a different tech such as an X-Wing with better shields or weapons.